


Thistle and Thorn

by Nanoochka



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Enemies to Friends, Episode Fix-It: s01e06 Rare Species, F/M, Jaskier has self-respect, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg Friendship, Jaskier | Dandelion Has Feelings, Jaskier | Dandelion Loves Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, M/M, Post-Episode: S01E06 Rare Species, Pre-Slash, Protective Jaskier | Dandelion, Yennefer is so done, the ex of my ex is my friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:02:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25787773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanoochka/pseuds/Nanoochka
Summary: Yennefer of Vengerberg is the last person Jaskier needs to run into after Geralt broke his heart. And yet somehow, where they least expect it, two nemeses find some common ground. (Post episode 1x06)
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 30
Kudos: 375





	Thistle and Thorn

**Author's Note:**

> Raise a hand if The Witcher is the only thing that's been getting you through the pandemic. This is the first thing I've written in 6 months, which is unfortunate because I assumed, as a horse girl who likes solving riddles, I'm basically Geralt IRL and would have no problem writing about him and his ridiculous boyfriend (and girlfriend). Joke's on me there, and this is definitely not the fic I thought would break my dry spell.
> 
> If I can keep this up, I'd like to continue this as a series culminating in eventual OT3. Pray for me and [come say hi on Tumblr](http://nanoochka.tumblr.com) if y'want.
> 
> Thanks to my gal [R.C.](http://rcmclachlan.tumblr.com) for cheerleading and keeping me going with love and lots of Witcher fic recs.

On the edge of a mountain on the edge of the world, the worst day of Jaskier’s life takes a turn for the worse when he stumbles out of a bush and discovers none other than Yennefer of Vengerberg muttering her way down the same path. Of all the mountains in the fucking world, it would have to be the one Jaskier has been desperate to vacate since his heart was unceremoniously tossed off a cliff to rot in the valley below with all the poor bastards who came before him. It’s been a trying day; the least anyone could do is leave him to weep in peace.

But it’s certain, as he observes her lurching progress, that Yennefer didn’t escape Geralt unscathed either. Like looking in a mirror, Jaskier could be watching himself careen away from heartbreak in a vaguely downhill direction, aching and hurt and lost. Longing to return to where their adventure began and things were simpler. Oh, how naive and unsuspecting he was then. How naive, really, were they all.

Leaves snarled in the dark nest of Yennefer’s hair make a sad mockery of a crown, and her dark eye makeup has smudged and run dark tracks down her cheeks. With a sense of melodrama Jaskier can’t help but admire, her black boots kick up ineffectual clouds of dust as she stomps and stumbles and curses her way back to civilization, looking more like a bedraggled racoon than one of the world’s most fearsome, beautiful, formidable sorceresses. Not that Jaskier would ever say so to her face. On either count. It's such a pitiful sight that something clenches in his chest.

A twig snaps beneath his foot. Jaskier freezes; so does Yennefer, less than two minutes ahead of him. He winces as she whirls round in a fury, one hand poised to curse him into oblivion and reaching for her dagger with the other, except that the moment she sees him, her expression falls along with her hands, replaced by a look of confusion, then mortification, then annoyance. Jaskier bites back the instinctive urge to apologize.

“Hello,” he says, which isn’t much better. He lifts a hand in an awkward wave. 

“Bard,” snaps Yennefer with a flick of her hair. The way she infuses his title with such loathing undoes whatever sympathy Jaskier might have felt for her a second ago, and his cheeks flush with anger and embarrassment. How she ever survived at court with such appalling manners is beyond him. It’s nearly impressive, how she folds her arms and sneers down her nose at him considering he’s farther up the path than her, and she scowls like Jaskier is the reason they’re both stuck in this awful place. Jaskier’s had quite enough of being blamed for problems of other people’s making today, thanks very much. “What in Lillit’s name are you doing here?”

“Ah, Yennefer,” he replies. It emerges on a sigh he pulls from the roots of himself. His shoulders feel weighed down to the ground and his voice lacks all joy, suddenly too tired to hold heat. “What a pleasure it _isn’t_ to run into you. Again.”

Their timing could rival that of any comedic duo from the Novigrad stage. It should be enjoyable, exhilarating, trading barbs with one so clever, and sometimes it is; Yennefer’s tongue is deadly sharp and she’s an asshole of the highest order. Jaskier has a particular fondness for those qualities in anyone else, namely himself, but bantering with her feels like picking a fight with an executioner as they swing the axe high. Like an ant bickering with a boot.

Predictably Yennefer rolls her eyes. All it does is emphasize the bruiselike shadows that have blossomed underneath. No glamour, Jaskier realizes. Odd. “Don’t you have a witcher you should be trailing after?” she taunts. “Or has Geralt finally grown bored of the futility of your existence as well?”

The insult is weak even for her, and yet it finds its mark. Jaskier’s intimidation of Yennefer isn’t feigned—he well knows she could end him with a flick of her little finger. Normally he’d crow with smug satisfaction at such a tired riposte. Now, so close to the truth as to be uncanny, something snarls in his gut instead. Unconsciously he clenches his fists and grits his teeth, ready to remind her what eviscerating wit really sounds like, but then he considers again her tangled hair, smudged kohl, and dusty furs, and the ire evaporates as unceremoniously as dewdrops in the sun. 

Jaskier meets her eyes dead on and doesn’t bother to mask the heartbreak surely writ plain across his face. As it turns out, he's too tired to muster his usual bullshit either, not even to save face before his nemesis. He sighs again and presses his lips together in a grim smile. “Yes, actually. How’d you guess?”

Her eyes widen almost imperceptibly and for a moment Yennefer is silent. They regard each other like two ageing alleycats, ragged and weary and battle-torn, until she sighs too, echoing Jaskier’s exhaustion and sadness back at him. She turns to face him more fully. He sees the moment her shoulders sag and the righteousness drains from her face, leaving her looking as hollowed-out as Jaskier feels. 

Wary, he approaches until they are standing mere feet from each other across the trail. He doesn’t have to look down at her by much; too used to measuring her against Geralt’s bulk, it’s easy to forget Yennefer isn’t some diminutive creature composed entirely of magic and sass. Even tired and worn-down, she has substance, power to be reckoned with and a backbone that refuses to bend. Jaskier isn't sure whether he appreciates or resents the reminder that Geralt’s head could never be turned by anything less than a force of nature. Like always recognizes like.

“Fucked you over too, did he?” Yennefer asks thickly. She speaks as if around a lump in her throat, then shrugs. Huffs. “Figures.”

“If you like.” Jaskier returns the shrug one-shouldered. It jostles the strap of his lute. The instrument, so insubstantial and delicate, easily damaged, feels like it’s a thousand pounds by now, so long has he carried its weight. With each step down this accursed mountain he might as well be wading into a river with pockets full of rocks. Jaskier swallows and ignores the burning in his eyes. “The difference being he didn’t actually send you away. Or wish you’d never met, for that matter.”

“No, he just made it impossible that I should ever be free of him.” Yennefer is the first to break eye contact and look away. She shifts her arms, wrapping them around herself instead, and focuses on something beyond Jaskier’s field of vision, blinking hard. Jaskier is paralyzed by the conflicting urges to comfort and castigate, to pat her shoulder in sympathy and shake her out of her self-pity for having the one thing—

“Well.” He clears his throat and doesn’t move, arms hanging uselessly at his sides. “I suppose we’re both perfect examples of why no one ever entrusts witchers with anything they shouldn’t destroy.” The words are unfair, but Jaskier, mulishly, doesn’t take them back or apologize for being petty. It’s not like Geralt’s here anyway. Jaskier can be as much of a dick as he likes now, forever.

Yennifer gives a very unexpected and very unladylike snort. But it gets her to look at him again, and a watery smile curls her lips that almost reaches her eyes. “The more fools we, then.”

The silence that descends hovers somewhere between awkward and understanding. Being in Yennefer’s presence has always been excruciating, not only because she threatened to kill Jaskier practically the first time he laid eyes on her, but because she is an uncomfortable reminder of everything he could be but isn’t, everything he could have but does not. 

Like most casual narcissists, Jaskier avoids spending time around those who emphasize his deficiencies. However, his self-respect has always checked itself at the door where Geralt of Rivia is concerned, and he’s long suspected he has a bit of a masochistic streak. It’s the only explanation he can come up with for why he’s spent his best years trailing after someone who holds him in such low regard, why he stood by and watched Geralt open his heart to another while Jaskier’s withered a little more each day, fruit rotting on the vine.

“Did you know about his wish?” she asks. “His child Surprise, all of it?”

Jaskier hesitates. But he can’t lie, not even to protect Geralt. Yennefer deserves better than that. “Yes.”

Her eyes glimmer their eerie shade of purple. Not with magic, no. It’s just plain old angry tears, human as anything. “And?” she presses. “I imagine you think it’s perfectly acceptable behaviour, to take away one person’s choice while shunning responsibility for your own. To reject what others would give their souls for.”

 _Oh, Yennefer_ , Jaskier wants to say, for what a beautiful, wretched hypocrite she is. Yennefer might be hurting and raw, but Jaskier thought her less irony borders on cruelty. Her self-absorption would be detestable if Jaskier weren't guilty of it as well. In all the time he's known about Geralt's wish, he's never wished to undo it to give Yennefer her freedom of choice back, but rather to be rid of her for good. Still, there is one thing he won't accept. Not again.

“I've had about all I can stand of being blamed for Geralt's misdeeds," he rasps, meeting Yennefer's gaze with as much steel as he can muster. He balls his hands into fists. "His choices or lack thereof are his alone. Perhaps I'm guilty by association, but I have visited Cintra every year for over a decade to serenade the princess on her birthday. To bear witness, and to never allow myself to forget the hand I played in it.”

Yennefer's eyes bore into him, but Jaskier isn't done. Taking another step forward, he lifts his chin, squares his shoulders, and borrows some of that backbone he so envies her for. Predictably Yennefer doesn't back down, but neither does he. He's tired to the bone of being everyone's pushover.

“I thought I could warm him to the idea if I returned with tales of the little lion cub’s grace and intelligence, let him see her grow up through my eyes. But Geralt won’t speak of it, won’t hear of it. Nor will Calanthe entertain the idea, if I’m honest, Law of Surprise or no. I’ve tried. But I am not responsible for his lack of action, witch.” 

Yennefer’s mouth parts slightly, a flash of shock she’s not quick enough to hide. For several seconds she is speechless; Jaskier wonders if she might apologize, then dismisses the possibility. Then: “Princess Cirilla of Cintra,” she breathes. “ _She’s_ Geralt’s child surprise.”

“Indeed.” His expectations met, Jaskier inclines his head, watching Yennefer closely. He isn't stupid: it's common knowledge that mages are sterile, like witchers, and if Yennefer's stunt with the djinn hadn't clued him in, Jaskier can guess from her argument with Geralt what she's been after all this time. “She’s a remarkable child. Thrashes me at Gwent ever since I had the horrible idea of teaching her to play, and every year I return, she’s brimming with more questions about the world, more than even I can answer. You’d like her very much, I think.”

At this, Yennefer curls her lip and sneers, "You're a cruel little rat when you want to be."

"Perhaps. Or maybe I'm telling you the truth because you're just as tired of being left behind and lied to as I am."

She looks away, first turning her head, then her body so that Jaskier is staring at her in profile. This is perhaps the first time it’s occurred to him that Yennefer might have more in common with him than he’d like to admit. They’re both stranded here on this mountainside, after all, unmoored in the wake of a man whose aversion to responsibility has altered the course of their lives, if not destiny itself. And whatever her feelings for Geralt, Yennefer can no more make excuses for him than Jaskier can, especially now. He thinks it’s significant that she’s silent, for once with no opinions to offer on the matter, no sharp words or petty insults. If he'd known sincerity was all it took to blunt her contempt, he'd have offered it long before now.

“Why don’t you just teleport yourself somewhere else?” he asks, genuinely curious. “You aren’t stuck here, not like I am.” Had Jaskier any shred of magical ability, he’d be leagues away from here by now, already drinking himself into a stupor in some tavern or chasing oblivion between the legs of as many nameless, faceless strangers as he could manage. Preferably all at once.

“Aren’t I?” Yennefer grimaces but doesn’t miss a beat as she meets Jaskier’s eyes and deadpans, “I could, perhaps, but I felt my day could use a bit more self-flagellation.” 

Despite himself Jaskier honks a laugh, startled, then covers his mouth with his hand to muffle a guffaw into his palm. At the sound, the smallest of smiles tilts Yennefer’s lips, rancor nearly forgotten. It... helps. A bit of shared understanding. A bit of empathy they've both been lacking.

Moving slowly so as to communicate his intent, Jaskier reaches out and raises his eyebrows for permission. Instinctively Yennefer tilts her head away, but only just, then stills to let Jaskier pluck a leaf from her hair. The face she makes is priceless when he shows it to her.

“I think you’ve had enough punishment for today,” he says and throws it away. The tightness in his throat is back, a little easier to speak through now. “We both have, yeah?” 

Yennefer’s eyes linger on him a moment longer, considering what he’s really asking before she turns away and starts walking again. Her pace is easier now, less fuelled by rage, and as Jaskier falls into step beside her, she doesn’t storm off in irritation as he knows she’s perfectly capable of doing. 

Still, there’s a comfortingly familiar note of bitchiness in her tone as she says, “You don’t need to escort me, bard. I hardly need protection.” 

Jaskier snorts. Melitele’s tits, she and Geralt really are birds of a feather. He feels old, suddenly, so old that he could lie down on the ground and never move again, but his feet don’t lose their rhythm. If Yennefer expects an unkind word will scare him off, then she’s clearly forgotten whom he’s spent the last two decades travelling with. This might be his last long trip for a while, so he might as well make it count, prove to himself and everyone else he’s made of sterner stuff than that. He’ll walk Yennefer to sodding Nilfgaard if he has to, don’t think he won’t.

“No,” he answers calmly, patient, “but I'll likely need yours. And some company might be nice.”

The only answer is another huff, one Jaskier takes for agreement, and not even all that reluctant or begrudging. He reaches over to pluck another bit of detritus from Yennefer’s hair, ignoring her growl of warning, and hands it to her.

Regardless of the narrow look she gives him, Yennefer proceeds to study the leaf as they walk, turning it over and over in pensive silence. Jaskier looks away to hide his smile.

The landscape around them is alive with birdsong and sweet alpine breezes that wind through the sparse trees and scrub brush dotting the ground. Now that his heart has calmed and receded from his throat, Jaskier can actually appreciate how beautiful it is here, a quiet interrupted only by the sound of their boots on the dirt and a world otherwise indifferent to their existence. 

What feels like hours pass as they walk. The landscape begins to change, becoming more forested and green, and Jaskier, normally so ill-acquainted with silence, doesn’t feel the urge to narrate. Nor does Yennefer, it seems. He does take his lute off his back and begins to play, plucking aimlessly at the strings until a song starts to take shape, something he’ll either remember to jot down in future or won’t. He cares not. 

He is, however, surprised by how Yennefer tilts her head to listen, occasionally humming or tapping her fingers against her dress in time, remarkably birdlike in her interest. Her voice, faint though it is, is pretty and melodic. In all the times they have crossed paths, made camp together or begrudgingly shared a table with Geralt while Jaskier plied tavern audiences with song, she has never given any indication of liking music at all, let alone him. Jaskier always comforted himself that the feeling was quite mutual, but he has been wrong before. About so many things.

The sun trails across the sky and the clouds begin to blush with sunset, staining the snowy mountain peaks orange and pink. It’s beautiful, and haunting, and sad if Jaskier thinks too hard about it, but he plays on in lieu of any words that could hope to do the sight justice or convey the hollow ache in his chest. If a poet can be said to have intuition for this sort of thing, Jaskier suspects he will spend the rest of his life trying to give voice to this longing, unsuccessfully. But he doesn’t have to begin right now, not yet. The heartbreak will keep.

Yennefer is the one who eventually breaks the silence. She speaks both suddenly and like someone who has been mulling a particular thought over for quite some time, never quite intending to say it out loud.

“I don't have to read your mind to see how you feel about him,” she bursts out with. 

Jaskier can’t help but flinch. A discordant noise twangs beneath his fingers, and he stops at the same time Yennefer does, whirling to look at him with violet eyes abrim with frustrated tears. Her small hands make fists at her sides and her mouth trembles with—with something. She is angry, furious, which is to be expected, but not at Jaskier, which… isn’t. 

“It’s clear. Ridiculously, pathetically, _stupidly_ clear.”

“I suppose it is,” Jaskier agrees warily. Pressing his lips together into something that doesn’t even begin to approximate a smile, he turns and continues on, walking ahead like Yennefer didn’t just hit upon the most painful, long-held secret of his existence. 

He always thought that, when confronted with his love for Geralt, he would panic and stutter and do everything in his power to deny it. It could be he never pictured the conversation would be with the love of Geralt’s life. Or it could just be he’s tired of hiding. 

Yennefer stumbles after him as though caught off-guard by his admission, looking at him like Jaskier just grew a second head. Knowing perfectly well it will drive her crazy, he resumes plucking his lute, adding, “It’s nice not to be the only one who knows for once.”

The slight to Geralt makes Yennefer echo Jaskier’s bewildered snort from earlier, but she isn’t done being on the offensive, nor trying to rile him. She hurries to outpace his measured stride so she can walk in front, lobbing words over her shoulder like shrapnel. “And I suppose you wish he’d tied _you_ to him for all eternity instead.” She laughs spitefully. “How you must hate me.”

She looks so bloody _indignant_. Something tells Jaskier it isn’t on her own behalf, or Geralt’s, and that makes it easier to speak patiently, if a bit obviously. Really, this is something he shouldn’t even have to explain to a child. 

“My dear, he hardly needed a djinn to do that.” His smile is kinder than Yennefer deserves; he finds he has the stomach for it, now that he can’t be bothered to waste the effort dissembling. Jaskier plucks out a different song—a pretty, idle sonata he recalls from his school days. In a minor key, of course, because Jaskier may stand accused of many things, not all of them fair or accurate, but he’s never denied having a dramatic streak as wide as the Pontar is long. 

“How utterly depressing,” she spits. 

“It’s not depressing. It’s not anything. It just is.” Jaskier shrugs. He’s had many years to come to terms with it. “There are far more savage and basic forces out there that can accomplish the same result, and far more painfully. Free will has about as much to do with one as it does the other.”

“And there’s no fucking cure for either.” The growl that escapes Yennefer’s throat is oddly comforting, sounding neither surprised nor satisfied by his admission, just frustrated. Jaskier is less glad of the tears that have finally started to spill down her face and feels an answering prickle behind his eyelids he has to blink away. 

“You’ll get used to it in a decade or two,” he says with forced cheer. He releases the neck of his lute to pat her on the shoulder, only slightly patronizing. “I can speak from experience. Perhaps by then we’ll have made it off this gods-forsaken mountain.”

Yennefer shoots him a glare. Without realizing it, she’s fallen back into step with him, almost like they didn’t just pause to indulge a brief meltdown. Her steps are more forceful, though, irate like when Jaskier found her. He is hardly an uncomplicated person, but he will never bloody understand women. 

“You are not half as annoying as you led me to believe,” she snaps. “I feel rather misled.”

“I don’t actually hate you either,” he answers. “I thought I did”—here a thoughtful dominant chord while he mulls it over, screwing up his face as he weighs the accuracy of his words and finds them true—“but perhaps I was hasty in my initial judgement.” He ends on the tonic. Resolved in mind and cadence both. 

“I’m getting off this fucking mountain,” Yennefer announces with a grunt and stops in her tracks. With a flick of her wrist, she opens a shimmering white portal, like it was just that easy all along. Somewhere along the way she allowed Jaskier to forget she was humouring his pathetic human deficiencies, his dependence on mortal inconveniences like “walking” or “land travel.”

“You are just full of non sequiturs this evening,” he says with a furrowed brow and only a bit of disappointment he didn’t expect to feel, “but very well. I wish you safe travels, my lady. Thank you for escorting me thus far.” He bows at the waist with a hand over his heart. Meaning it. His throat is bizarrely tight all over again.

Yennefer snorts and bats away his sincerity with a bored wave of her hand, gestures impatiently for him to straighten up like gallantry is so far beneath her as to not even warrant the dignity of a response. Her haughty expression sends her violet eyes sparkling. If Jaskier didn’t already belong to another, mind, heart, and soul, perhaps he would fall a little in predictable love. But he gets it, what Geralt sees in her. He does. It would be so much less painful if he didn’t. 

“Don’t be absurd. You’re coming with me.” Yennefer gestures at the portal, which wavers and swirls and manages to look simultaneously very, very wrong and like it’s been here all this time. Jaskier’s skin crawls even as he wants to reach out and poke it, which is not unlike how he feels about all the things Geralt has ever hunted for coin.

“I… am?”

Yennefer rolls her eyes. “Do you really think I’m _that_ much of an asshole that I would just leave you here?”

“A million, trillion percent yes,” Jaskier answers unhesitatingly, but with a crooked smile that dares her to deny it. When she offers no rebuttal and returns his grin, full and white and sharp, this more than anything feels like the first time they’ve truly seen each other, a shared flash of humour that has nothing to do with Geralt. Geralt, who is probably still brooding somewhere on the side of a mountain somewhere, and who would shit his pants to see them now, smirking like conspiring schoolchildren. 

_Let him_ , thinks Jaskier with a vindictive streak he hadn’t expected to feel so soon. It makes his feet feel a little more planted on solid ground, his heart a little less raw, maybe. If he told Yennefer what he’s thinking, she’d probably throw back her head and laugh at the image. Jaskier’s willing to test that theory later. 

Later, provided this isn’t just an insane dream he’ll wake up from any minute now. If it isn’t, he plans to get them both gloriously, messily drunk.

“You’re smarter than you look,” Yennefer says approvingly and holds out a hand. She wiggles her fingers. “How do you feel about Gors Velen? I’ve a lovely house there on the coast. And wine. Lots of wine.”

If this isn’t the strangest fucking moment of Jaskier’s whole life, he doesn’t know what is. Geralt would go absolutely mad if he knew. But that’s only a small part of why Jaskier takes her proffered hand and winks, tightening his hold on his lute with the other. 

He steps forward until he feels the portal’s unnatural breeze against his skin, magic crackling and making the hairs on his arms stand on end. Beyond that there is the faint smell of the sea. He breathes it in deep and lets it out slow.

Yennefer’s fingers are small but strong around his, holding tight. Jaskier matches the force of her grip easily. 

“You know what, darling,” he says, meeting the challenge in her gaze, “a trip to the coast sounds like an absolutely superb idea.”


End file.
